Canada and Obama

According to several polls done for his inauguration, the majority of Canadians say that they like Barack Obama, but, well, they don’t really trust him.

I can understand those feelings, and share them. While Obama will be a relief for the entire world (except maybe the Bush family) after the last eight years, I fear that those who expect him to solve all of the problems from which we currently suffer will be badly disappointed.

He plans to get out of Iraq, he says, but will then send the troops to the “good war” in Afghanistan. Good war? That would be the one Canadians are dying in, and we are planning to leave (for sure) in 2011. We don’t need the Americans painting it as the good war. (What does that mean, anyway?)

One of his promises was to review NAFTA. Well, all three countries involved in NAFTA dislike it, so that may not be bad. But the economy is not in a good place, and you can bet that the Americans will be looking out for themselves.

Ah, the economy. Bush’s neo-conservatives brought it down; can Obama put it back on its feet? As with Humpty Dumpty, it is much easier to destroy an economy than it is to put it back together. Even a new president with the best possible plan will not find it a simple task to undo the damage that has been done. A recession is unavoidable, with only the length and degree in question. Hopefully he will start from the bottom, with the workers, and build up, rather than start at the top and hope things will "trickle down" as they have failed to do for some time now, but at this point we will not recover without pain.

Will the U.S. become less paranoid under Obama? That is also not likely to happen quickly. "Homeland Security", border walls, lists of people not allowed on planes, all of these developed fairly rapidly, but even if Obama believes them to be unnecessary, it would be political suicide to remove them the same way.

Neither the United States, nor the world around, should expect miracles. Canadians are right to like Obama without expecting too much out of him. But a little is better than nothing, slow improvement better than continued collapse. Hopefully the Obama government is at least the first step in the right direction.